spiders uow crawl in from the rain 040912 ... mangrove and quiver softly in fright at the dangerous deluge outside. they hide in the corners, curl up in their silky-soft beds, and whisper to each other in the darkness: "Are you scared?" "Where's mommy?" 040913 ... andy spiders drowning themselves in lake water china rattles in the cabinet a dampness in the fingertips carries a fragrance like wet leaves, a light vinegar the sun is lieing again, a steep ledge mistaken for a deep valley, reveals your memories for dreams, you always find yourself halfway fallen down the same cliff, spinning but motionless, head full of the myths of physics and the still chinese blue of the sea so far below. 050329 ... andy petty and affectionate, no, i am not, i won't be there when your brains fall out, to weave the pink chunks back together, into something cohesive, you will disappear, home is where your heart is my friend, and you, you have no home, it smells so clean and pure under a rock, just like the places you once loved and knew so well. i want you to know what it's like to disapear. i want everyone to know. but mostly just you. see: i_dont_cry symphony_of_snakes 050329 ... raze you've knit a blanket of silk to trap me where you've made your home i'll rest here a while waiting for your return not knowing if i'm food or a friend or a little bit of both 130521 ... tender square so i just screamed bloody murder on my front porch: i felt something tickling my face and when i brushed my fingers against my cheek, a huge spider fell on the cushion of the couch swing and scurried away. yesterday when michael and i got home from canada, i noticed that there were three large spiders above the front entryway, where there had only been one in the days prior. their collective web was so thick it looked like gauze. well, i had to kill those guys and i hate spraying them with raid because it’s brutal— paralyzing their central nervous system for upwards of a minute before they stop squirming. i feel bad about it; if they had been residing in a more inconspicuous spot, i’d have let them be, but they were messing with our threshold. the whole thing has me consulting tachen’s book of symbols for a glimmer of insight: “unapologetic, spider is nature, forever spinning its strings of vitality and devastation. the very matter of psyche can become a mercurial web of stuckness. equally, the signal threads of dream and vision vibrate with meanings that can be grasped, feeding the soul and it’s transformations” (p. 222). something tells me it’s pointing to a bit of both interpretations... 210905 ... tender square recalling now the story i read as a kid from the “scary stories to tell in the dark” collection about a girl who had gotten bitten on the cheek by a spider while bathing in the tub. a boil formed on her face that kept growing, until one day it burst and a bunch of baby spiders came pouring out. thanks for the nightmares, alvin schwartz! 210905 ... unhinged the first time i ever saw my dad relocate a spider i had to have been pretty young (my first memories when i was about three except for the memory of the snake rearing up and hissing at me when i was riding the red tricycle that would later be my brother's in the driveway that came back to me in a dream years later; for some reason i mentioned the dream to my mom when i usually preferred to keep my dreams private. 'that actually happened to you when you were really little on east 71st street.'). my mom shrieked the way most of us do when we see an instinctively creepy crawly thing with that many legs. my dad brusque and surly told her to stop yelling and gently moved it from it's spot on the wall to a piece of paper and then carried it to the front door where he flicked it outside. 'why don't you just kill it dad?' 'because spiders eat annoying bugs like mosquitos and aphids.' 210905 ... tender square i’ve seen or killed at least one spider every day on the porch since first posting this. they all have pale yellow/brown bodies with a single vertical stripe down the back, and they’re as quick moving as crabs. a few days ago i killed six in the span of two hours: two had spun a chiffon web with the branches of the fake eucalyptus wreath on the door; another four had clustered in a porch corner with a mansion of webs. i know they’re part of a whole ecosystem, but jesus, is it time to call an exterminator? michael suggested i stop writing on the porch, but i’m not ready to go back to my desk yet. 210915 ... tender square last night, i was in the tub waiting for the water to fill when i noticed a spider scurrying on the ceiling toward me. figuring there was no time to waste, i jumped up and darted into the kitchen au natural to get the step stool and a fly swatter, dripping water along the hardwood as i went. smacking the spider was tricky because it was hanging out where the ceiling meets the wall. i missed and it fell to the floor. “asshole!” i cried, climbing down from the stool and squishing the spider against the tile. “did you just call a spider an asshole?” michael called from our bedroom. “yeah, i did. it came after me when i was naked and vulnerable.” * i know we’re getting close to halloween and all, but seriously, can we stop with the gigantic spider decorations on all the trees and fences and doors? i don’t care if it’s a neon orange and purple cartoon arachnid, it still creeps me out. 211002 ... tender_square i can always tell by the quality of his sigh that there’s a spider in his midst. in our house, i am the spider assassin. every time i get one, i sing rick james’s “cold blooded.” before entering the shower, he spotted a lil’ guy on the window frame; tried to slap it with the swatter and missed. “i knew i should’ve sprayed it,” i heard him mutter, then the hard press of aerosol. “damnit.” i went in to investigate. he had the towel wrapped around his waist, holding the can of raid and looking toward the window disapprovingly. “it crawled inside the frame.” i tried to take control of the situation, even though he didn’t ask me to. grabbed a wad of tissue, unlocked the window and drew it up. there was no spider. “i think you got it, i don’t see anything.” i wiped the frame of spray and climbed out of the tub, returned to my desk. a few minutes later i didn’t hear the shower running. back in our bedroom, he was putting his clothes on. “you’re not taking a shower now? is it because of the spider?” “it’s just too soon,” he said. i laughed. later, before bedtime i ribbed him. “y’know, i just saw fred the spider in there hanging another web hammock and he’s just resting away. wanted me to tell you ‘hi.’” “did you kill him?” i assured him there was no fred, kissed his forehead, and went to bed. 211114 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Ha! David's afraid of spiders. I'm not. I'm afraid of everything else. 211115 ... tender_square in my dream they burrowed between carpet fibers. i was lying against it, running my hands across shorn acrylic buzz-cut. i made my mouth a fan and blew to see if there presence was imagined. a spider stretched its legs in response to my breath. then, i noticed a much bigger kind above it, one i didn't dare irritate. my focus changed to my duvet. and in the lining i saw sleeping spiders at the edges, contained in the sacs of soft down or their own weaving. 230129 what's it to you? who go blather from